How to Criticize Coworkers

Giving critical feedback to someone more senior is usually a great way to build trust. People in power don’t get to hear critical feedback often, because people look up to them, or assume they understand everything better, or are just plain scared of them.

Template: “I’d like to give you some feedback. While working on X, you’ve been really good at Y.  When B happened, I felt X. My impression was Y. And it made me concerned that Z."

Encouraging an existing behavior requires less convincing than discouraging an existing behavior.

Giving fast feedback is extremely useful, because the feedback recipient can still both remember the behavior, and even recreate some of their internal state.

Be as specific as possible using SBI (situation-behavior-impact). Don’t tell someone they’re smart, or a jerk, or they have a problem doing X. Tell them specific examples of the behavior you want them to do more or less of. And if you don’t have any… then you probably shouldn’t give this feedback. Avoid Fundamental Attribution Error.

Praise in public, criticize in private. If you’re praising someone’s behavior, let their team know! You are encouraging this behavior not just in them, but in all the people witnessing that praise. Criticizing someone’s behavior is an emotionally fraught moment. Don’t make it worse with an audience - they’ll be focused on what the audience thinks i... See more

Feedback is high leverage because it’s cheap for you to give, and provides high value to the recipient by giving them information early. Their alternative is having to guess at their own performance and behavioral impact.

In both cases, direct feedback to someone is your highest leverage option to get them to be better. It is the least work on your part for the most long-term impact.

Feedback is a gift. My goal is to get everyone reading this to give more, and more effective, feedback to their peers.